Patricia's Pesky Possum

A few nights ago we had separated Clarabelle from her baby calf, Astro, for the first time so that we would get the milk in the morning before Astro drank it all.  Clarabelle woke Tricia up at 1:30 am moo-ing incessantly.  I did not hear her.  An m1a1 Abrams tank could bust through the wall of our bedroom and I would sleep right through it.  Tricia was worried that Clarabelle's hollering would make all of our neighbors hate us so she walked out to the barn at 1:30 am to put the momma and baby together. 

She told me about this the next morning and then told me that while she was out there, she saw a possum in the hen house.  I put traps out to catch the possum, but for the next two consecutive nights we caught nothing in the trap and a possum killed two chickens!  This morning, however, we tasted victory - a big fat possum was caught in the trap!  He was "playing possum," pretending to be asleep.

Ah, but he was not asleep.  As I got closer, he hissed and bared his teeth at me.  I noticed that he had thrashed around in the trap and bent it up and broke the 'flapper' off, but that can be fixed.

I carried the trap with the live possum in it to the garden, which will be the place of interment.  We find that possums add fertility to the soil.  I prepared a shallow grave with a shovel and then had an idea.

I went inside the house and asked Tricia if she'd like to humanely put down 'her' possum.  She's always up for adventure and said, "Sure, why not?"  I got my Marlin .22 rifle down and showed her how to pull the hammer back and fire it and she took care of business.

Tricia's possum will no longer visit the hen house in the middle of the night, striking fear in the hearts of our hens.  The time of death was 8:43 am.

As the dirt was covering the possum, I noticed that the grave was between some Red Romaine lettuce and Bull's Blood Beets and it reminded me of something.

In elementary school we read a very sad novel called "Where the Red Fern Grows."  At the end of the tear-jerker, Billy's dog, 'Old Dan' was killed by a mountain lion and was buried and a red fern grew right near it.  It was a very sad book and the red romaine near the possum's grave reminded me.  One big difference though - I'm not really sad about losing yet another chicken-killer.  Just to be safe, I have the traps set again tonight!